It’d be perfect if the sword was a claymore. Wouldn’t work with the shield, but would go well with the crazy Scot motif.
Sword replaces bottle, shield replaces sticky bombs.
I demand shield bash as a secondary attack.
ZekeDMS
3664
I wonder how effective the sword will be on its own. Says no crits, but does it do enhanced damage to start with? I am, of course, presuming I haven’t unlocked the shield already and will find this concern.
Then again, I’m betting I could combine a force-a-nature and a baseball bat to make one…
Aw hell, I’ll use it alone even and love every minute of it. HAUNTED SWORD!!!
It’s still a full hand and a half it looks like, which is fairly ridiculous anyway.
So, Sco Res. What the hell is it? Scottish Resistance, maybe? Update to stickies or pipes? Bombs that explode on contact after first bounce, but have a diminished/non-existent timer blast?
PC Gamer guessed at ‘Scotch Reserve’ which might fit with another bottle replacement that had some kind of drunkenness power up effect when you swigged from it. This would be in line with the sandvich and the scout’s magic drugs but would mean even less reason to use the standard bottle than the claymore is already providing.
ZekeDMS
3666
Well, I could imagine it giving you a bonus with each drink, but being the good stuff, you can’t use the bottle to hit anyone.
Dunno. Lots of options!
Scout Restraints. You slap a harness on a scout and ride him around, jockey style.
ZekeDMS
3669
I uh…I think I want the scout restraints.
I can’t begin to imagine how funny it’d be to slap them on an enemy scout and fire pipes from his back.
Or use him as a steed with your mighty Eyelander and Chargin’ Targe.
The Soldier got the first of his new weapons, the Direct Hit. Rockets with a smaller blast radius, but more damage, and much faster travel speed.
http://www.teamfortress.com/soldierupdate/
Oh wow, minicrits on air shots, 80% faster, 25% more damage? The old rocket launcher is going bye-bye. There just has to be a catch like there’s less shots in a clip or the reload is slower or the firing rate is slower.
It sounds like a weapon that is straight out better in most circumstances (except a large group clustered close together when you happen upon a crit rocket) as long as you are an excellent soldier player. 80% faster rocket speed sounds like it would more than compenstate for the reduced splash damage radius by allowing you to easily hit targets directly at medium range. I can see this being the new weapon that always kills you whenever you log on to a clan server by mistake with rusty skills.
Not a super fan of the concept either, sounds far less interesting than the demoman’s sword.
As always though the truth is in the playing maybe there is some hidden gimpage that isn’t immediately obvious.
Strato
3673
With the new soldier weapon though, I wonder what effect it will have on rocket jumps. Does the increased damage also translate to taking a bigger damage hit when jumping? We shall see I guess.
Sounds like a nasty anti-sniper weapon too.
— Alan
that blast radius is ridiculously tiny though. assuming they use spheres the volume of the Direct Hit’s blast is 37x smaller. this means that pretty much only direct hits work, and are trivial to dodge over longer distances. no more killing jumpy scouts at close range too.
it also severely reduces the “spam” you see in a lot of clan matches. most TF2 pro games start with focused explosive spam on chokepoints on mainly-unseen targets; without the large splash of a normal rocket launcher’s spam a team could easily fail to do enough damage to the other team’s medic or demoman and lose the fight for middle. OTOH, it could be extremely important when defending raised control points like badlands spire or fighting on the crates on granary as good players can easily get airshots especially with higher rocket speed.
what I’m saying is basically it’s a good unlock as you really have to think about if the situation requires it, sorta like the FaN and the Kritzkrieg.
Hunty
3676
Yeah, from the description it seems balanced. Though the proof is in the explosive pudding, I suppose.
The thing about all these “alternative” rather than “upgrade” weapons is that I, as a terminally lazy person, find switching them as the situation warrants to not actually be that viable to do in practice. Like, hit escape, go through two menus, respawn or go to a resupply locker. The games are so fast-paced that a lot of the time the situation I selected one loadout for has changed to the point where I could do with my old one back, and on and on it goes so I just end up picking one and sticking with it.
I’m not saying it should be a case of hit a button and swap, as that would defeat the point. Maybe you could select two pre-set loadouts, and grab a pickup on the map to switch them (that spawns and is placed similarly to a large medpack). I dunno though. Just spitballing.
Fuck yess!! Soldier un-noobiefied!!
Strato
3678
Hit “M” which is a shortcut to changing your loadout for the current class you are playing. But yeah, you still have to go to the locker in spawn in order to change it if you haven’t died.
The only time I ever frequently change my loadout is as medic where I alternate between either the Kritz or the regular medigun (kritz for defence or arena, uber for offense on payload maps). Otherwise, I find my own playstyles dictate my loadout, and stay that way. So, for instance, as a scout I don’t use any of the unlock weapons, except if I’m playing a map with areas one can knock a person off causing environmental death, in which case I may go with the FaN.
The pryo, heavy, sniper classes all have their loadouts set in stone, so to speak. Don’t really play with spy much.
Kirian
3679
I like it. The big reduction in splash damage and the aerial mini-critical means this is a weapon for high-level Soldier players. Which I hope to be some day.
It also reduces the effectiveness of rocket-spamming at choke-points. That’s always handy- both of the weapons are looking to reduce weapon-spamming in some way.
Pod
3680
or:
Press M and change your loadout.
OR:
even better, bind a key to +quickswitch!
e.g., bring down the developer console (`) and type
bind “k” “+quickswitch”
Still, you have to go back to a supply locker. But that’s not exactly a stupid requirment given how fast you can change what your loadout is with these other methods.
